What has happened to common sense in our legislature?

The cynical among us will assert that it has never been present, but the fact is that the laws of the state are supposed to be reasonable and sensible, providing for public safety without imposing an unreasonable or vindictive burden upon our everyday lives. In 2004, at least two new laws violate these guidelines.

The new statutes on school zones are a mixed bag. It has resulted in one significant benefit, in that all school zones must have their active periods clearly marked, either with a time or with flashing lights. The previous method, "when children are present," was dangerously ambiguous. When children are present in the school? When they are visible? When they are in the crosswalk? This was clearly a problem, and the new law has solved that in an unambiguous way.

However, the clause that makes a school zone on a street with a 30 MPH speed limit be a school zone 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is utter nonsense. There is no plausible justification for treating a 30 MPH street any different form a 35 MPH street. It is nothing but an opportunity for confusion, and confusion breeds accidents and injuries. The only possible beneficiary is the police, with an opportunity to gather additional fines. However, the police have already stated they are not enforcing middle-of-the-night violations of this law. That one statement tells us this is a bad law.

The other law that draws my ire is the change in crosswalk restrictions. Under the previous crosswalk law, I was required to stop if a pedestrian in a crosswalk was in or about to enter my half of the roadway. Under the new crosswalk law, I am required to stop if a pedestrian is in or about to enter my lane, or any adjacent lane. On a two-lane road, where most crosswalks without a traffic signal are, that means I must stop for the entire transition. This change was boneheaded, in two different ways.

First, the new scheme is not intuitive. It is not common sense. When the pedestrian is just stepping off of the opposite curb, or after the pedestrian has passed me, there is no gain in having traffic remain stopped.

Second, this change does nothing to improve public safety. Pedestrian injuries under the old law were not caused because the law was inadequate. They were caused because of accidents, and those accidents will occur with equal frequency under the new law.

One might think that the legislature would surely not have acted unless there was a pandemic of pedestrian deaths caused by crosswalk violations. This is simply not the case. According to statistics from the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, half of all vehicle/pedestrian collisions in Oregon over the past 20 years were determined to be the driver's fault. Of those, the pedestrian was in a crosswalk 3/4 of the time. This has resulted in an average of 2.6 fatalities per year.

Any preventable death is regrettable, of course, but when we compare this figure to the numbers killed in this state every year by drugs, drunk driving, guns, and cigarettes, it seems incredible that the legislature would have wasted any time at all implementing a useless change to the pedestrian statutes. Only by focussing on the relevant and important problems facing this state will the legislature retain the respect of the people.